Model View Controller design question

Question

Hi,
I am creating a brand new web application, and would like to use the Model View Controller design (using Beans, JSP, and Servlets).
I am looking design suggestions for handling page forwarding. I don't want to post to a jsp, and I don't want to hard code the name of the next jsp on the forward or in the servlet. I was thinking of having a properties or xml file, which lays out the routing read by the servlet and then dispatched.
Does anyone have any other design suggestions on the best way to handle routing someone through a web application?

Answer 1

What you can do is create a servlet that initializes the mappings on startup...create a hashtable of mappings from a file. You'll have to parse the file, so you can either use XML and use a SAX parser, or your own format (name=path? ie. order=/order.jsp), which ever one is simpler for you to use.
To load the servlet on startup, you specify the load-on-startup parameter in the web descriptor, web.xml:
<servlet>
     <servlet-name>MappingsLoader</servlet-name>
     <servlet-class>packagename.MappingsLoader</servlet-class>
     <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
where load-on-startup number is the order in which it loads the servlet, 1 being first.
Then once you've created the hashtable, store it in servlet context.
When you want to forward something, just use a requestdispatcher object and the hashresult to forward the request to another web component (in this case, a jsp).